COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The defense lawyer for a 36-year-old Eritrean man says his client has confessed to the deadly stabbing of two people at an Ikea store in central Sweden.

Per-Ingvar Ekblad said Thursday the suspect accepted a court's decision to hold him in custody for two weeks over the stabbing of a woman and her adult son on Monday in Vasteras, west of Stockholm.

The motive was unclear but Sweden's Migration Agency said it met with the man to discuss his case hours before the attack, adding his deportation was imminent after his application for a residency permit had been rejected.

At the same hearing, a 23-year-old Eritrean man who had been suspected of helping the older man was released for lack of evidence.